Let’s start with a poem by Koi Bashi – one that was used as dedication by Sheri S. Tepper in her wonderful novel ‘Sideshow’. The poem is called ‘Man’:
heaven longing ape
angel who stumbles
blind light bearer
who falls and fumbles
worshiper of error
seeker after truth
hurting and aging
lover of lovely youth
wild beast raging
craven and brave
freak of fashion
and custom’s slave
puppet of passion
lowest and loftiest
a sideshow gape
god’s fool, nature’s jest
heaven longing ape
So, a few days ago, I used a quote from an article by Times writer Simon Barnes. This one:
“In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver, in the land of giants, boasts to the King of Brobdingnag about the advanced technology that humans have created for warfare. The King replies: “I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.””
In case you wondered, today’s column is not about me being struck blind en route to Damascus. In other words, I’ve not converted to the ‘That’s why I love mankind’ church…
… but, as with all things, you can introduce witnesses for the prosecution as well as witnesses for the defence…
… and as strange, and even perverse, as it might seem, today’s two witnesses for that defence come with tales that have their roots in one of the most disgusting periods in human history – a history that’s not exactly shy of episodes that would revolt your average Brobdingnagian monarch.
I’m talking about the Holocaust – and if you don’t mind, I’ll stop talking now. I’ll just leave you with these two tales. Make of them what you want; take comfort from them if you can…
… and us being these ‘heaven longing apes’, God knows we need all the comfort we can get.
1)“A Jewish Holocaust survivor who danced with his family at the entrance to Auschwitzconcentration camp and other Nazi death camp memorials has attracted a growing following on the internet with a film of their performance. Adolek Kohn, 89, a former Auschwitz prisoner who is now an Australian citizen, said the video, which shows him, his daughter Jane and her three children bopping to Gloria Gaynor’s hit song I Will Survive, is meant as an affirmation of life and stands as a celebration of his own survival.”
2)[T]he Tour of Poland set off from Oswiecim,the Polish town better known since the second world war as Auschwitz. Before the start, the riders assembled outside the gate of the main extermination camp. Stijn Devolder, the Belgian champion, was the first to remove his helmet and sunglasses, and the rest followed suit. Silence reigned while a rider from each of the 34 countries in the field stepped forward to place a rose at the spot. “The emotion,” La Gazzetta dello Sport reported, “had no nationality.”
You all remember Paul, of course: The octopus who became the prophetic star of the football world cup – as you, no doubt, have also come to know and love the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahbutwedon’thaveanyhomosexualsiniranejad.
Now, the two of them are doing a duet of sorts, a nicely orchestrated song and dance routine for clown & cephalopod:
“Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the octopusof spreading “western propaganda and superstition.” Paul was mentioned by Mr Ahmadinejad on various occasions during a speech in Tehran at the weekend. “Those who believe in this type of thing cannot be the leaders of the global nations that aspire, like Iran, to human perfection, basing themselves in the love of all sacred values,” he said.”
Ah yes… Human perfection, no less – and sacred values. The ones immortalised by Shakespeare in one of his famous sonnets.
Okay, in one of my lesser limericks:
There was a mad goon in Tehran
who was irrepressibly drawn
to kill maidens and crones
with bullets and stones
and gay mass hangings at dawn.
Or, as Paul might well have predicted that Tolkien would write:
“One shit to rule them all, One shit to blind them,
One shit to judge them all and to their deaths confine them
In the Land of Mullahs and their Sharia lies.”
(The way things are going, they’re gonna deep fry me…?)
You all know Paul: the octopus who predicted that Germany would beat England – admittedly not a biggie, presience-wise – before the Heimat would be defeated by Spain, who would then beat Holland in the final.
Now, I am quite happy to admit that I also find this tentacled oracle mildly fascinating but I’m pretty perplexed with the paucity of the questions asked of it.
Me, I’d love to do a series in some national newspaper, called‘Let’s Ask Paul’but only if I could bring up some serious questions too.
Like:
- Will Paris Hilton ever make another successful home movie?
- Never mind whether Obama can win a second term: With FOX and Palin braying for blood, will he even survive the first one?
- Will the next Dan Brown novel contain language?
- Will Gordon Brown and Tony Blair bury their past grievances for long enough to go kill (and bury the bloody remains of) Peter Mandelson?
- Will the Pope play the Pope in the new ABBA opera, “I believe in angels”?
- Will Sarah Palin kill her unwanted son-in-law from a helicopter in a shotgun wedding frenzy?
That kind of stuff.
Anyway, I don’t need any octopus to tell me that chances are slight that any newspaper will ask me to write such a series, so I might just as well make it a regular feature on this blog.
The beauty – and essence – of sport is that it is absolutely useless.
You could say art is useless too. Take Paul Cézanne. He painted the same mountain for about all his bloody life. Painting after painting of that same spot, in different seasons and at different times of the day. That’s a lot of oil and canvas spent on something that will outlast all these efforts and that is there for everyone to see anyway…
… but at least people in various parts of the world can now go to museums and say ‘Look, a picture of a mountain!’, so you can’t truly say that the whole project was of no use at all.
In sports, you can. Millions of people will watch (live and on television) how two people hit a series of balls at each other. At the end of all this pointless activity one of these men or women will lift a trophy (while both receive a generous amount of money) and that’s it.
There’s nothing to show for all this ’sound and fury’ afterwards – apart from a few billions of hits on the internet, if one of the female protagonists almost showed a nipple while waiting to receive a serve but then, you’d see more flesh on any beach, so that’s hardly ‘legacy’ material.
No, sport is, most probably, the most useless invention mankind ever dreamed up – and perhaps that’s what makes it such a glorious thing…
… and why the following bit of news made me unreasonably happy:
“Sidney the snail stormed to victoryat the World Snail Racing Championship in Norfolk. He beat off stiff competition over the 13-inch course to win a silver tankard stuffed with lettuce. The event at Congham near King’s Lynn has been running for nearly 40 years, and although there are a number of imitations it’s the only recognised World Championship.”
The funny thing about the final was that so many newspaper and television commentators were fixated on ’style’. Holland didn’t play like Holland – but Spain did. So, we had (according to many) a Dutch team that played as if the players, like prince William in our national anthem, were German, while the Spanish players performed as if their movements were conducted by Johan Cruyff.
Of course, all of this was a bloody nonsense; the kind of simplistic drivel cheap journalism and punditry thrives on – though I do admit that all during that final I did see the ghostly influence of a team that wasn’t there.
I know that Holland had beaten them in the semi-final but as the match progressed you could see how Team Orange became more and more possessed by the not so Heavenly spirit of the Uruguay of yore..
In other words, the Dutch played like thugs.
Farewell to all that, though…
…and enough about sports for a bit, apart from the following, which will serve as my final word on this tournament and can be filed under ‘Thought For The Day’. Here goes:
Isn’t it strange how sports commentators on TV always inform us of the bleeding obvious, telling us exactly what we already see, live at home?
I’m not saying they should recite Shakespeare’s sonnets while we watch the game unfold but what they do is the equivalent of not being able to read a book without moving your lips…
… or as if I would address someone I invited for dinner with a “And now I’m opening the wine bottle. I’m holding the bottle in my right hand. I’m lifting the glass with my left hand. I’m filling the glass. I stop pouring the wine. I put the full glass back on the table. I put a cork back in the bottle. I put the bottle back on the table…”
Strange how millions of people who watch sport on TV accept this idiotic state of affairs, while your average dinner guest would have (quite sensibly) brained the host with said bottle, shouting:
“The octopus said to have psychic powersafter predicting all of Germany’s six World Cup games correctly, has had his say regarding the final in Johannesburg on Sunday – and it is good news for Spain.”
In other words, the best thing Team Orange can do is pack its bags and fly home early, to avoid the rush hour…
… or is it?
It’s true that the trusted cephalopod has shown it has an eye for the winner but Paul is not the only show in town.
There’s Ringo, George and John, for instance, although those last two would have to make their predictions through the Ouija board – which would lend a certain gravitas to the occasion. People tend to be more impressed with messages from the Great Beyond than from Sea Life.
Anyway, it’s not the rest of ye olde mop top band that have joined the augural choir, it’s a Singapore parakeet…:
Parakeets are quite famous for their prognosticating skills, of course. Ask any (dead) miner.
What was that?
Right, you fail to see how a talent for predicting slow suffocation a thousand or so feet down an old Victorian mine can be of any use when foreseeing the results of a football match in Johannesburg, 1753 meters (or 5732 feet) above sea level?
That’s a fair point – or it would have been…
… if squids were known for their technical and tactical football playing, punditry or stadium building skills…
… for all of which they have at least as little proven skills as the England team, any ITV & BBC commentators and the English Football Association combined…
… and let’s be honest here: You wouldn’t go to those clowns for any serious kind of football related questions either.
(Walrus or Octopus: Make your bloody mind up, will you…!)
19.10 (windmill time): It seems that everybody and his crocheting goldfish is doing a live World Cup blog. I can’t say I see the attraction but I have done a few Cup pieces, these last weeks and I do have to post something tomorrow. (I already did a short non-football piece earlier in the day.) So, I might as well join the rather solipsistic choir.
19.18: I mean, why a live blog? The whole world and its pickled false teeth is already watching those damn games live, so who cares what some spotty Apple nerd or some semi-computer literate greybeard writes about them.
19.20: I guess it has a certain appeal for those who like to bet on silly stuff, so one could place bets on the likelihood that your average blogger makes
a) more grammatical mistakes than
b) football related observational and/or tactical howlers,
and is
a) less or more annoying than the designated TV commentator and
b) makes more lame jokes than a politician on the hustings.
19.30: I’m watching this via a live stream, provided by theDutch NOS. So far, it’s been a highly dependable way to watch football.
19.32: I like football but I loathe blind, tribal fans, so I’d rather not watch a game than to do so in a pub or on some city square, with tens of thousands of hysterically partisan drunks.
19.35: No, I don’t have a TV.
19.40: The only downside of live computer streams is that they’re not actually live. So, on the computer you see the ‘live’ action three or four minutes after those who watch the games on TV. So, if you don’t want to hear about a Dutch goal before you see it – those with televisions can shout and blow their fucking vuvuzelas with the best of them – you need a serious set of headphones. Which I do possess, actually.
19.42: One thing I noticed reading some of the other football blogs is that when the bloggers get bored (or desperate) they tend to provide their (probably as bored & desperate) readers with links to other football blogs and articles. God knows I’ve got nothing interesting to say, so I’ll do the same thing right now.
19.47: What was that? Yes, I know the above has nothing to do with football.
19.48: Nor has your limbic system and I don’t hear you complain about that.
18.49: Plus, this is my blog and I’m a huge Gaiman fan, so I will post (and link to) whatever the Hell I want.
19.52: The Dutch commentators are talking about the Suarez handsball… again…!
19.53: Small wonder I prefer Gaiman clips or the odd cartoon – like this one:
20.00: depressing TV chit-chat. I have no intention to join the orange circle jerk.
20.11: I’m such a genius. I’ve been doing this live blogging shit for more than an hour now and I just realize that the whole point of me doing this is to have something to post tomorrow – a few minutes past midnight, at the earliest, when the match will be long over, unless the two teams do a penalty shoot-out like that tie-breaker at Wimbledon…
Gods, wouldn’t that be absolutely brilliant though: a penalty shoot-out that ended 69-68…
… after eleven hours and five minutes of play…?
Now, that would be worthy of a live blog.
As it stands though, my money is on you (one or two idjits and their promiscuous reading glasses) reading this long after the whole world and its litigious comb-over knows which of these two teams waxed their chests triumphant.
20.21: Do I look bovvered though…?
20.34: Hah, I missed the the national anthems and the kick-off: I was watching that beautifully unbovvered clip again…
20.35: Damn, you’d almost forgive the guy for the whole colossal Iraq cluster fuck…
20.36: What?! Okay, already, let’s see what’s happening on the field.
20.37: Not much, it seems, though I can inform you that Holland are dressed in orange and Uruguay in blue, while the grass is green and the ball white.
Right, we’re changing to ‘live’ match time now. Minutes & seconds played and stuff…
9.02: The linesmen’s flags are yellow, by the way.
10.42: Someone in an orange shirt loses the ball
10.52: Blue shirt: Ditto.
11.20: One of those two yellow flags is raised.
11.35: Wrongly, says Slow Mo.
12.32: First Biblical observation: In the Dutch team the baldies seem to be the alpha males: Sneijder & Robben, to name but two.
In other words: Samson, eat your heart out!
13.50: No, it’s not exactly boring but it’s still more like a game of chess – on a VERY large green board, with no visible squares…
14.58: … which means Holland should win this, since we’re the only ones with an honest-to-God queen.
15.39: Nothing much wrong with republics, obviously, unless you’re playing chess.
16.32: Van Persie goes down in Uruguay’s penalty area, while committing a very obvious foul. Well done, that man!
18.49: Not that I’m any good at chess, alas….
… What was that…? Oh, Holland scored. (Even in very Slow Slow Mo the goalie didn’t have a chance. Truly excellent shot.
19.20: Cue a shot of our monarch in waiting (Son of Queen B) and his Argentinian wife.
19.30: Told you so.
20.55: First yellow card of the match for Uruguay.
21.11: Same colour as the linesmen’s flags!!!
21.56: It’s a pity the red card isn’t green – or I could have said, “Same colour as the grass.” (I have high hopes for Van Bommel to collect one of those much coveted green cards. Red, I mean.)
23.33: The vuvuzelas seem to be less irritatingly noisy – or could it really be that I’m getting used to the bloody pests.
25.44: The fun thing about the guy who scored, Van Bronckhorst, is that all the experts were convinced he was too old, too slow, and quite superfluous to requirements.Better put your trust in cephalopods.
27.33: Missed some brouhaha on the field. Damn! Thanks, Mr Slo Mo! An Uruguayan foot hit Danny de Zeeuw’s face, thanks to an overhead kick. Definitely an accident but Jesus, that must have hurt.
30.25: Wow, De Zeeuw is back on the field. Having seen the super slo-slo-slo-mo I am sure his brains must have been slushing in his skull like a goldfish with a serious coke habit in its bowl.
33.51: If Holland win this game, will people remember it was our monarchy Wot Won it?
36.28: It’s not exactly Karpov versus Kasparov though.
40.30: It’s 1-1, thanks to Forlan. A deserved equaliser? Perhaps not quite – but interesting times! It should have been a relatively easy ball for the keeper. It wasn’t. First mistake of his tournament but not a good moment to make one.
47.26: What? What? What? (Oh, they’ve started again…)
50.47: Good chance for Uruguay. Really a very good chance but in the end not of any more use than Labour’s election campaign assurances they still had a good chance to keep the Tories out.
53.48: Hominem te memento! That Uruguay goal is like that old Roman slave doing the parrot thing over the conqueror’s shoulder, “Remember, Caesar, you are only human!” In other words, Holland are showing some serious nerves here. For now, they are not playing football.
56.03: For the first time, this match, Uruguay look upper- instead of underdog.
57.15: Interesting times indeed.
57.30: The Dutch commentator has just realized Uruguay are gaining in confidence.
66.46: No, I did not fall asleep!
68.30: Good chance for Holland – I heard. I was making a fresh pot of tea. So, missed that one (including the slo Mo.)
69.15: Damn, while I was scribbling the above, Holland scored. This time I did catch the repeat. Sneyder again – and again a very lucky goal. Not that he will care about that, I think.
72.15: 3-1. Robben. A much better goal, this.
73.58: Another slo Mo: It really was a beautiful goal. And another camera shot of our version of the Prince of Wales*, giving it the thumbs up.
*Without thetampon fixation**
**As far as I know, that is
76.08: While I was typing the above the Dutch commentator, with twenty more minutes to play, said “Holland is in de finale”. No need to translate that, I presume. Useless wanker.
77.48: No yellow flag, nor yellow snow…
… but a yellow card for a Dutch defender
78.32: Still no yellow for Van Bommel, let alone a red card.
80.01: Okay, it now would seem that Team Orange is through. Twenty minutes ago though, it seemed more likely Uruguay would score the winning goal – but who will remember that, outside Uruguay, that is. Ad victorem spolias, and all that.
82.36: This was not an easy game for the Dutch though. I suppose the past tense is correct now. Uruguay look shattered. It’s Holland doing all the (pussy-footed) attacking at the moment.
83.34: Forlan goes off. He scored – and deserved better than this. He and the rest of the team were the better side, for about twenty minutes, half-way through the game. 3-1 does no justice to that, or to them.
85.35: The Dutch though seem to be able to find that all-important late incoming wave, riding their luck very well.
87.27: Is it enough to win the tournament, though?
87.59: If Germany beat Spain, I seriously doubt that – but then I was also sure Brazil would destroy Holland.
88.30: The whole of Africa, of course, will be happy Uruguay and their ‘true hand of God’ have been defeated today.
89.34: Existential question: If you have a game of chess – and a monarchy – and half-way through the game there’s some kind of revolutionary Lenin gambit, can you switch ideological horses in midstream? Can you exchange a king or a Czar for a Commissar?
90.00: Oops! Uruguay score…! 3-2 Two more minutes to go, give or take a few cardiac arrests.
I promise I shall stop talking chess, or Lenin, or the fact that Catholic schoolboys were the ones that led to the revolution, or…
What?
Oh, okay….
93.09: Hectic but disorganized.
93.48: Yellow card for Van Bommel. Yes! At long bloody last. Free kick for Holland though.
94.27: Still playing. Hectic, hecticle, hecticles.
94.55: Holland through to the final though. Well, well. (I think I need to watch the game again though tomorrow, on the repeat channel – without any damn note taking!)
Caitlin Moran, of the Times, how I love you – let me count the ways…:
“The relationship this country (51 million people) haswith the squad (23 men) is hopelessly unbalanced. We love them too much. We crush them with our needy affection. We are like a toddler stroking a hamster to death, then freaking out when Mr Pickles goes all stiff and doesn’t want his hamster nuts any more.”
The country in question being England, of course – but it could as easily have been almost any other country, Holland very much included.
This time round, Holland is possibly closer to winning the tournament than any moment since Rensenbrink hit the post at 1-1 near the end of the Argentina-Holland final in 1978…
… but the orange-obsessive majority of the Dutch people were convinced ‘we’ would take home the damn cup before the first match was played – same as at any other tournament Holland played and handsomely failed to win.
Football sickness is a very weird affliction indeed – and an orange skin is just one of the many disfiguring parts possible.
Forget that stupid colour though and think green, when we return to Caitlin Moran, describing one of the poor patient’s hysterical symptoms,
“which is to act only slightly less dementedly than Kermit the Frog when he goes, “It’s The Muppet Show, with our very special guest, the England football team, YAAAAAARGH!””
(Such a pity that the vuvuzela was never played by The Great Gonzo…)
I know it’s very wrong – being Dutch and all – but having seen Germany beat Argentina 4-0, I do hope this world cup final will be between Germany and Holland…
… and if our Dutch team will finally play with a bit of flair, the je ne sais quoi of the Cruyff era (or that first round of the last European Cup, for all that) I will be happy enough to support Team Orange…
… but if they play that final like they played their other games in Africa – which they most probably will – I sincerely hope that Germany will trash them.
In all honesty though, even if Holland would find its groove, Germany would still deserve to become world champions. They’re the only team that’s shown they deserve it.
So, I expect some officious official to ring my bell any moment now, to confiscate my password but I can’t help it.
It is indeed time to give the younger team its rightful place – so, if these two teams meet on the eleventh of July, in Johannesburg, I’ll go Benedict instead of Boer and (in the privacy of my living room) I will quietly sing:
“Wir werden Weltmeister!
Wir werden wieder Weltmeister!
Wir sind die Besten international,
wir sind wieder erste Wahl”
(Tough on Smurfs, tough on the causes of Smurfs…?)
People can react badly when their national team under-performs. Colombian defender Andreas Escobar, for instance,was shot deadafter the 1994 World Cup, where he had scored an own goal…
… and yesterday former Brazilian superstar Ronaldovery helpfully advisedhis fellow countryman and hapless Brazil captain not to go on holiday in Brazil, after the latter’s less than helpful performance during the Brazil – Holland match.
Not that Europeans suffer defeat more gracefully. When England failed to even qualify for the 1994 World Cup, they resorted to biological, scorched earth warfare, by sendingFrances Ruffelleto the Eurovision Song Contest.
In 1974 Germany hosted the world cup and beat Holland in the final. It’s fair to say our country did not take this defeat well. As one wit said, “Who cares about the 1940-1945 occupation? It’s 1974 we’ll never forgive them for.”
This loss also inspired the kind of cunning plan Baldrick would have been proud to call his own. Realizing that the 1978 World Cup would be held in the fiercely chauvinistic, dictatorial and corrupt Argentina, some people within the Dutch Football Association decided some serious pre-emptive strikes were called for…
… one of which being the recording of Pierre Kartner’s Smurf Song in 1977, which was released in early 1978 and meant to be a hit in more ways than one, having been designed to say‘Don’t fuck with us’ as loudly as any baseball bat wielding Robert de Niro.
This shot for the bough backfired almost as spectacularly as Argentina’s subsequent short trip to the Falklands: the first thing the Argentinians did when hearing the bloody song was to set up anillegal Smurf figurinesmanufacturing industry…
… so Holland lost yet another final against a home team.
I’m sure that 2010 will be a bumper crop year for weird and petulant behaviour by many a humiliated football nation. England, France and Argentina, for instance, were all sent home like puppies who’d disgraced themselves on a particularly expensive carpet, so much is expected from these countries in this regard.
Italy’s national team, of course, like France, did not even survive the first round. The first reactions in France were highly promising but things are also getting quite interesting in Italy, as the following article shows:
“The coastal town of Eraclea,near Venice, prohibits the building of sandcastles on the beaches because they can “obstruct the passage” of people strolling along the strand.”
Which is a clear signal to Italy’s Football Association that, whenever, however and, more to the point, wherever they want to do some fancy forza building, they better think twice about doing so on Eraclea’s beaches.
